


A star in the haze of dawn

by TheSunflower_Knight88



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Angst, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Rape/Non-con Elements, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:20:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22277761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSunflower_Knight88/pseuds/TheSunflower_Knight88
Summary: Jaime can't save Brienne in the riverlands.
Relationships: Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 27
Kudos: 103





	1. 1. Jaime POV

“Take her over by that tree,” the Hoat says. She fights, they win. Jaime watches.

Time slows, and now he’s somewhere else. A place that he’s seen before but can’t recall. Caught in a world that knows no torture or torment, nor love or passion, it simply exists. 

“Cersei?” He calls to the darkness. Her hands are in his hair, her body moving against his own. “Brother,” she sighs in his ear, but when Jaime turns her sister falls to ashes in his arms.

When they drag Brienne back to her chains, she’s torn and broken and bloodied, but breathing. She curls in on herself without so much as a glance in his direction. 

*

They come for her every night, and when the screams begin he dissolves like a star in the haze of dawn.

He speaks to her sometimes. Brienne never replies, there’s nothing much left to say.

And then one night they escape.

Some fool leaves a knife too close to his bindings. Suddenly he’s free, and he frees the wench, and then they ride.

When they make camp the following evening, there’s much left unsaid. Like the stains marring her shirt, the lifeblood of each man she slew before they left, or how she’s his prisoner even if neither of them have acknowledged it.

“Thank you,” she murmurs, when a bruised sky settles, and the crows become restless in the trees.

“For what?”

“You could have left me.”

*

They reach the capital, and he’s home.   
It smells of shit and blood and spices and lies, and he’s home.

Brienne is ushered off into a small quarter in the keep, far away from his own. She has baths run for her, clothes tailored and lavish spreads set before her but what the maid of Tarth really wants, he cannot giver her.

Jaime finds himself prowling the corridors just beyond her room, wondering what she thinks of, who she dreams of, why he cares. 

He hasn’t spoken to her since their return. 

He attends the council meetings. They dine on secrets and lies and the blood of their enemies and he finds himself wishing for the innocence of the country, the sweetness of twilight spent under the stars.

Memory is a fickle thing, he thinks to himself after the council has ben dismissed, It always seems to dull what you wish to forget and leave only the good until you forget the bad was there at all. 

*

Cersei comes to him every night.  
He drowns his woes in the softness of her body, her scent, her words, her. His sister, his lover, his torment and his salvation.

The evenings feel like they will last forever, until she leaves, and he’s alone with his thoughts once more.

*

The next morning Jaime is summoned to his father’s quarters.

“The king has agreed to release you from you kingsguard vowels.”

Tywin Lannister never was one to beat around the bush.

“May I ask why?”

His father fixes him with a steady gaze. “You are to wed Brienne of Tarth.”

Tywin continues to speak, something about trade routes and duty but all Jaime can hear is a ringing in his ears and everything is too hot and loud and real.

“No,” he says, shaking his head “No, I won’t do it.”

“I am your father-” 

“So you keep reminding me,” Jaime interrupts, “But alas, I am finding myself more akin to a cheap slave to be sold off to the highest bidder than your son.”

“If that were so I would have married you off to the Tyrell girl a long time ago,” He replies, “Instead I allowed you to pursue your knighthood, that of which held no benefit to this family whatsoever.”

“And not a day went by that you did not throw it in my face,” Jaime grounds out. “Everything you have done has been to further your own legacy father, do not fool yourself into thinking that it has ever been more than that.”

“Enough!” His father’s jaw trembles, spittle clinging to his lips. 

“You will wed her, or your sister will wed her father, it matters not to me.”

*

Cersei comes to him in a flurry of passion that night. Its all heat and hands and sweat. Afterwards he holds her, listens to her breathing, running his fingers through her hair.

“The marriage could be annulled, after she bears me children.”

“Father would never allow it.”

“I know, I just wanted to dream for a minute.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs into his chest.

‘Why?”

“He’s sentenced you to a life with that beast.”

“And he’s sentenced her to a life with an oathbreaker.”

“Is it true that she was raped in the Riverlands?”

Jaime rolls away from her, running a hand through his hair.  
“Who told you that?”

“Pycelle reported that she was well broken in,” his sister smirks, “A woman like her should have enjoyed it.”

He grabs her wrist, hard enough to bruise, blood boiling beneath his skin.  
“Don’t you ever say that.”

Her eyes go wide, then narrow to slits.  
“Perhaps you’ve grown to care fore her, brother.”

She leaves in a swathe of silks, and Jaime vowels it will be for the final time.


	2. 2. Jaime POV

When the sunlight begins to trickle across the city the following morning, Jaime climbs the stairs to her room.

He’s imagined the exchange a million times in his head, sometimes she slaps him, sometimes she kisses him, but when he finally tells her, she simply stares.

“I’m to wed you?”  
It’s the third times she’s repeated it.

Her eyes are unfocused, she looks at the floor, now the ceiling, now the dresser table, now back at him.

“No,” she says slowly, shaking her head, “No, but why would my father…? No, he wouldn’t-he wouldn’t do that, why would he agree to this?”

“It would appear that his trade routes are very dear to him.”

“Get out.”

“Gladly,” he drawls.

*

Casterly rock is much the same as when he saw it last. Not nearly as extravagant as the red keep, yet too vast by a half.

Sunset, and Jaime climbs a long forgotten stairwell to a balcony facing the sea.

He watches Lannisport come alive as the sun slips below the horizon.

“I thought I might find you here.”

Tyrion stumbles over, drunk, or near it.

“Your bride awaits you, brother mine,” He slurs with a lopsided grin. “Im afraid your brooding, as glorious as it is, shall have to wait.” 

Jaime leans against the railing, meeting his brother’s mismatched stare. “The ceremony has not yet even begun little brother,” he says, nodding to the chalice clutched in his hands. 

“These days I don’t need an occasion to drink,” Tyrion replies with a chuckle.

Our lord fathers presence is occasion enough 

“Time doesn’t seem to work the same here, does it?” Jaime murmurs, as his eyes trail over the land of his childhood.

His brother follows his gaze, nodding in his drunk stupor. 

“I never understood what drew you this place when were were children,” he says, “And I still don’t, not really. But standing here, you could almost forget it all, couldn’t you?”

Jaime nods. “Almost.”

*

The wedding feast passes in a blur, or perhaps that’s the wine working.

He says the words int he sept, makes pleasantries with the nobles, and then proceeds to get very, very drunk.

Cersei sits across the room from him, incandescent in a shimmering gown of ivory and gold.

That night, when the bedding ceremony is over and noble ladies have skittered away she whispers: “You’ll think of me when she’s beneath you tonight, won’t you brother.”

He wants to kiss her. He wants to tear off her dress and pin her down and fuck her until he knows nothing except her.

But instead of all that he says:  
“Goodnight sweet sister.” And closes the door in her face.

Brienne is already curled up in bed when he all but falls into their bed chamber.

“Wife?” He slurs. His head rings and the world tips, and all he can do is lean against the wall and hold on.

Another glass of wine and he stumbles to the bed.

He shrugs of his doublet, his shirt and everything else, watches them fall to the floor. There, he sees her dress. It’s positively shredded.

“What is this?”

No answer.

“Brienne?’

He reaches across the bed and shakes her shoulders slightly. Brienne jolts so violently that she almost falls from the bed.

Her eyes are misty, distant as the pleasure barges on the horizon.  
“Don’t ever touch me like that.” She says it so quietly, it’s as if he imagined it.

“We're husband and wife now,” he purs, “Shall I explain to you what my marital rights entail?”

Brienne only fixes him with those astonishingly blue eyes, “Try claiming your marital rights tonight, and you will wake a eunuch on the morrow, I promise you that much.”

Later, he lies naked in the semi-darkness. The heady lull of the wine has ebbed away, leaving everything he has tried so hard to forget. He thinks about her. The woman lying only an arms-breadth away from him. How she never cried, not when they were captured, not when they beat her, not even when they were inside of her.

And perhaps she is more broken because of it.

“We will have to consummate it eventually,’ he says, perhaps more to himself than Brienne. 

And then more softly:”You can’t fight this forever.”

Silence.

And then:”I can try.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brienne is a bit of a savage


	3. Jaime POV

They fall into a strange sort of pattern.

In the mornings, they attend to the various roles that befit the lord and lady of the rock. When the sun begins its descent, they draw swords and spar.

Sometimes Brienne wins, sometimes he does, and sometimes he lets her win, just so he can see the glow that floods her face when she does. 

Come nightfall, he climbs in his side of the bed, and she climbs in hers, and that’s the end of it. 

*

There are exceptions.

One night he pays a visit to one of the myriad whorehouses of Lannisport, he is only a man after all. They draw him in with their wings of silk and heady whispers.

He wants to forget, and he does. For a time.

When he returns to his own bed, Brienne is long asleep. He slips beneath the covers feeling dirty, promising himself that it won’t happen again.

*

“Where were you?”

It’s a mid-summer night, salt clings to the air, leaving a tangy flavour in his mouth. He’s returned from another woman’s bed to find Brienne waiting for him. 

“Jaime? Where are you always going in the middle of the night?”

He tells her.

She stares at him, and then climbs back into bed. 

Jaime watches as she leans to blow out the candle, wondering why his chest aches every time he looks at her, wondering why it hurts that she doesn’t care. 

*

One evening he returns to find her drinking.

She’s bathed in moonlight with only a single candle burning above their bed. Her limbs are stretched out across the cedar table, almost languidly.

The candlelight renders her features softer, her eyes darker, cheeks flushed from the wine. She could pass for the Goddess of the night, he thinks, and absurdly he feels his cock begin to stir within his trousers. 

Jaime averts his eyes -unsettled by his bodies response to her- and crosses the room to snatch the chalice from her fingers. 

“What are you doing?” He growls.

Her eyes are too wide, too dark. She smiles. “Drinking away my troubles, a true Lannister I have become.”

Jaime takes her arm, tugging her up from the chair. She stumbles, he grabs her, she pushes him away and falls again.

When he offers her his hand she flinches away from him.  
“Don’t.”

“I’m trying to help you, wench.”

“I don’t need your help.”

*

Sometime later Jaime awakes.

Outside their shutters flap in the breeze, and the lacy drapes bulge and flutter beside the window. 

His wife is weeping. 

Steady, shaking sobs that speak of pain and loss and grief and everything thats wrong in the world. 

There is so much that he wants to say to her, but all of it feels flat and dull on his tongue.

So instead he does the only thing that he can think of.

Brienne gasps the moment he begins to massage his thumbs into her shoulders, snatching at his hands. 

“Shh,” he says, brushing her fingers away, “Just for once, let me do this for you.”

Her eyes are dark, the skin beneath them puffy and stained with tears. There’s a question in her eyes but he ignores it, meets her gaze until she sighs and settles on her stomach. 

She wears only a thin shift of spun cotton, it leaves little to the imagination. As his fingers skim deeper beneath the fabric, her skin takes on a pink, flushed glow. 

He wants to reach more of her, the skin she hides from him, to feel her trembling beneath him. But he’s back in the gods-damned forest again and she’s screaming as they touch her, and he wonders if it can ever be more than this. 

Jaime drops it and focuses on her slow breaths, the goose bumps rippling across her flesh as his hands roam her back. 

“When Cersei was pregnant, I would do this for her, to ease her mind.”

Brienne is silent a while.

“They were yours weren’t they?” 

She says it as easily as if it were a usual topic of conversation. As if his cuckolding the king of the seven kingdoms by his sister of all people were as mundane as the weather. 

“What?”

She’s looking at him again, with those big blue eyes.

“Myrcella, Tommen, Joffrey, they were your children, were they not?”

“Yes… Yes, they were mine.” The words slip out, before he can swallow them again. 

“Did you love them?”

“However I could.”

“Do you still love her?”

Jaime rubs a hand across his face. He feels very tired suddenly.

“A part of me will always love Cersei,” He says, finally, “The same part of me that pushed the stark boy from the tower. I won’t apologise for loving her, not even to you.”

“I would never expect you to,” she murmurs, and places his hand upon her back once more.


	4. Brienne POV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys sorry I know it's been ages but here is the fourth chapter, hope you guys like it.

At some point in the night Jaime must have thrown the covers over them both for Brienne wakes curled beneath crimson silk with a golden arm thrown around her waist and a body pressed against her own. 

They never wake up like this. 

On the first morning of their marriage Jaime had tried to pull her against him and bury his face in the crook of her neck, perhaps thinking she was his sister. A dark bruise upon his chest had reminded him that that was not the case at all.

She doesn’t want to think about last night, and yet she cannot shake the image of his emerald eyes boring into her, his warm hand rubbing circles against her back as if he cared. 

She slips from the bed and dresses quickly, fleeing before he wakes. 

*

Months pass and summer begins to recede leaving Autumn to surge forward in all its fiery glory, painting the land in hues of amber and bronze as far as the eye can see. 

Silk and gossamer gowns are cast away in favour of warmer garments as the air grows cool and biting.

Brienne for one is glad for the swing of the seasons. 

“A Long summer, though sweet and balmy foretells a Winter of hardships and suffering” her father once told her. And this summer had spanned nigh on one-and-ten years. 

“Do you believe what they’re saying about this Winter?” She’d asked her husband a few nights passed.

“And what is that, sweetling?”  
“This Winter will be the longest we’ve had in thousands of years, the long night come again.”

Jaime adopts that lazy smirk that she desperately wants to slap from his face, sea green eyes gleaming.   
“Well that’s quite morbid, isn’t it now?” 

“Do you believe it, though?”

“Perhaps,” he says, cocking his head. “Are you afraid wife? Fear not, there are many ways of keeping warm.”

His grin is as infuriating as it is charming. Brienne feels her cheeks warming despite herself. 

*

For all his taunts, Brienne comes to realise that Jaime Lannister is not the monster he would have her believe. At times he’s kind even, gentle. 

She finds herself eager for twilight, when they cross swords as equals.

Strike

Parry

Block

On and on they spin, moving to the rhythm of an ancient song of steel. And for a time she forgets. The world narrows to her and Jaime. 

His foolish smile when he knocks her to the dirt, ridiculously endearing. 

And that surprised chuckle when she knocks him down in turn.

It’s intoxicating; She can’t help but want more. 

*

It’s not as if life at the rock is completely free of its troubles. The noble ladies are more or less a flock of particularly maddening sheep. They bleat sweet appraisals to Jaime, all the while whispering Kingslayer behind his back. And for her they offer thinly veiled insults and bitter smiles.

It’s not as though she is new to japes. And yet… she is the lady of Casterly rock, a Lannister no less.

_They don’t need to like me, but I am their ruler and I demand their respect, if nothing else_. 

She tells them as much at the next counsel meeting, thoroughly enjoying the way lady Merrinworth almost chokes on her wine. 

Jaime has a sudden coughing fit that she suspects is his poor attempt at stifling a cackle.

After he recovers, Brienne adjourns the counsel before anyone can say another word, catching Jaime’s mirthful gaze as she sweeps from the room with all the regality she can muster. 

*

That night they’re lying abed. The room is stiflingly warm from the fire crackling away in the hearth, casting the chamber in a red glow.   
Jaime is close enough to touch.

She wants to. She wants to run her fingers up his arm, to know if the skin there is as soft as she dreams of. But the thought stirs up old terror and so she buries it with the rest of them.

He’s looking at her. There’s something intimate in the way of it.  
“What?” She sighs, turning her head to meet his eyes.

“Would you like children, wife?”

His words surprise her so much that she hiccups loudly. 

“I - I“ She’s stammering, her mouth gaping open like some rare breed of fish. 

Jaime’s mouth widens into one of those dazzling grins that steal all the air from the room. “Yes, you,” he chuckles.

It’s so bizarre, all of it. This infuriatingly beautiful, God-like creature lying in her bed, asking whether she would like to have children with him. If she didn’t know better, she would say they had both died long before in the company of the Hoat. 

“I don’t know,” she says, honestly. “I was so sure I didn’t. Before all of this. But…”

“You grew up.”

Yes, I suppose I did. A part of her weeps for her old self. The fiery ambition that had warmed her many a cold night. Her dreams of knighthood remain still, though much dulled. 

“To be innocent of the world is a lovely thing.”

He makes a soft noise beside her. “A poet now, are you?”

“No,” she murmurs, “Just a woman.”

They lapse into silence for a while, just gazing up into the canopy. A moth flutters across the ceiling drawn to the flames. 

“You know I don’t blame you for what happened to me.”

Jaime’s eyes snap back to her, ripped from whatever thoughts he was mulling over.

“Brienne, you don’t have to-”   
“I do,” she interrupts, “I want to.”

She closes her eyes and speaks. 

“We never talked of it after and I was glad for it. I thought that if I spoke nothing of it I could lock it away forever. But I realise that I cannot,” Brienne says, her voice shaky, “A part of me died with those men. I feel them every night in my dreams, when I bathe, when I dress.”

A tear slides down her cheek, catches in her pale hair.

“Perhaps I will always feel them.”

Jaime reaches out and grabs her hand roughly, pulling it to his chest and clasping it tightly, as if it were something precious.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

And soon they drift off to sleep as a lord and a lady might.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work, hopefully not my last lol
> 
> hope you guys enjoy reading it cos i enjoyed writing it :)


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